"The whole subway's mine for the slammin'!"
Persona 5: The Phantom X launched globally last week, on 26 June, 2025, but the game has already spawned endless memes thanks to its campy introductory villain. In Persona 5, the first villain players had to deal with was an abusive volleyball coach named Suguru Kamoshida, a despicable teacher who creeped on female students. Players had to wade through a dungeon-like manifestation of Kamoshida’s heart to make him publicly admit to his crimes.
In Persona 5: The Phantom X, players have to do the same thing for the game’s first big bad: the Subway Slammer. This campy big bad shows up in Japan’s train stations to slam into innocent passers-by, and upon being confronted by players, claims that "The whole subway's mine for the slammin'!"
You can see why players were a little baffled by his introduction.
Is the whole subway really his for the slammin’?
It doesn’t take too long for Persona 5: The Phantom X players to run into Takeyuki Kiuchi, the self-proclaimed Subway Slammer. He targets and slams into random people on the subway, drawing some sort of sick pleasure from the act. He’s dressed in a suit and wears a briefcase, and has a fairly generic appearance.
So why has the Subway Slammer gone viral online? Well, it’s down to the tone with which his evil acts are depicted. Where Suguru Kamoshida’s storyline was treated with a certain level of bleakness owing to the immorality of his actions, the Subway Slammer is just a really campy dude. You can’t take a villain seriously when he exclaims “And eventually I’m going to get you too, gahahahahahaha!” midway through a monologue about his evil subway slammin’ pastimes.
The Subway Slammer is about as cartoonish as a bad guy can get, which might explain why he’s become the subject of a hundred memes since Persona 5: The Phantom X’s global launch.
Exhibit A:
Exhibit B:
Exhibit C:
The Subway Slammer was first called out by players as something of a cringe-inducing misstep for The Phantom X's main storyline, but has quickly morphed into something of an icon in the playerbase. Despite his evil doings, Takeyuki Kiuchi is now viewed, rather perplexingly, as a hero for Persona fans, who are taking this joke as far as it can possibly go.
Who’s slamming people in the subways, anyway?
Despite the silliness of the Subway Slammer’s introduction, the character himself is inspired by a very real and ongoing problem in Japan. The bumping man, also known in Japan as “butsukari otoko,” refers to men who commit violence against women by purposefully ramming into them. Videos of people slamming into others in train stations and crowded public spaces have been recorded and disseminated online for years now.
The Subway Slammer appears to be Persona 5: The Phantom X’s take on “butsukari otoko,” though he's taken much less seriously than the main game’s spread of villains.
